Oikonomou T, Orfanidou A, Goulis I, et al. - In patients with decompensated cirrhosis, gal-3 proved to be an accurate and plausible biomarker of renal dysfunction. With very good discriminative accuracy for the outcome, a new prognostic model incorporating gal-3 and sodium was derived.

• Researchers examined 150 stable decompensated patients in 2 transplant centers and were followed up for 12 months (range 1-48, interquartile range [IQR] 6, 95% confidence interval [CI] 10-13.5) and their mean prognostic scores were Child-Turcotte-Pugh (CTP) 7±2 and model for end-stage liver disease and sodium (MELD-Na) 15±6.

• Median gal-3 levels were 22 ng/mL. Gal-3 (hazard ratio [HR] 1.026, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.011-1.041; P=0.003) and serum sodium (HR 1.032, 95%CI 1.006- 1.062; P=0.05) were the only factors independently associated with patients’ outcomes in a multivariate analysis of 94 patients (training group).

• Using the median gal-3 values, Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed different times of survival (log-rank P=0.006).

• A new prognostic score was derived, (0.026) × serum gal-3+ (-0.079) × serum sodium, with very good discriminative accuracy for the outcome (area under the curve [AUC] 0.71, 95%CI 0.63-0.88), similar to that of the MELD-Na score (AUC 0.69, 95%CI 0.67-0.89; P=0.73), while its diagnostic accuracy was validated in the remaining 56 decompensated patients (AUC 0.81, 95%CI 0.65-0.97).